Suella Braverman has come under fire after branding Pride flags “monstrous” and launching a vicious attack on trans “fantatics”.
The Tory leadership hopeful, who was sacked as Home Secretary on two different occasions, claimed she’d tried to stop a rainbow flag being flown at the department she ran. Ms Braverman dismissed the Pride flag as a “horrible political campaign” and blasted colleagues for failing to tackle a “lunatic woke virus”.
Ms Braverman, who jetted off to a right-wing conference in Washington days after keeping her seat, claimed rainbow flags made Whitehall look like “occupied territory”. And in a tirade against “Trans fanatics” she claimed children were being “mutilated” in UK hospitals. In reality surgical treatment is not available to under-18s, and restrictions have been put in place on the prescription of puberty blockers.
Her remarks were branded “disgusting” by critics. Ms Braverman, who is widely thought to have blown her chance of becoming leader, claimed that Pride flags on Government buildings were a sign of Tory failure. She said: “We Tory ministers, nominally in charge of the system, completely failed. The Progress flag flew over our buildings as if they were occupied territory.
“I actually asked, as a minister, ‘why is this happening? who says that it has to?’ and could get no answer. None that would be committed to paper anyway.”
Her remarks have been met with comdemnation. Broadcaster Ian Dale, who tried to stand as a Tory MP, said: “What a disgusting speech. And she seriously thinks she has a chance of leading the Conservative Party. Not while I have a breath left in my body. Moderate Conservatives need to stand up and be counted. This will not stand.”
Monica Lennon, a Labour member of the Scottish Parliament, said: “Suella Braverman has chosen every word in her anti-LGBT speech deliberately to stoke fear and division for her own gain. She is unfit for public office.”
Meanwhile Conservative Home founder Tim Montgomerie said her chances of becoming Tory leader are slim because she’s viewed as “toxic”. He described her as a “genuinely kind, public-spirited person”, but went on: “She has almost no chance of becoming Tory leader. Her political image is too toxic.”
Ms Braverman went on to claim that the Tories failed because they were too liberal. And she lashed out at civil servants, saying she’d tried to scrap unconscious bias training – but was told she was “on the wrong side of history” by a top official.
Continuing her tirade against Pride flags she told the National Conservativism conference in the US: “I couldn’t even get the flag of a horrible political campaign I disagreed with taken down from the roof of the government department I was supposed to be in charge of.”
She said “other Tory politicians” were to blame, saying the party wanted to be seen as “liberal and progressive”. Ms Braverman went on to lash out over Trans rights, which she linked to the Pride flag.
The Tory MP said: “Well the Progress flag says one, monstrous, thing to me: that I was a member of a government that presided over the mutilation of children in our hospitals. We Tories, right through our smoking ruin of a General Election campaign, claimed taht we were doing something about Trans fanatics. When in fact what we did was let it happen.
“I am too physically appalled to go into what ‘it’ is, that it is something that the true grown-ups in any civilised society should never allow to happen to their or anyone else’s children.”
Ms Braverman went on that she was seen as the “real villains” who were losing the party votes with her “hateful” words. She claimed the blame really lies with liberals within the party.
She said: “Our problem is us. Our problem is that the liberal Conservatives who trashed the Tory party think it was everyone’s fault but their own. My party governed as liberals and we were defeated as liberals. But seemingly, as ever, it is Conservatives who are to blame.”
Ms Braverman is expected to put herself forward for the Tory leadership, but is not fancied by many to succeed. Bookies reckon Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel and James Cleverly are all more likely to win. But she may be offered a role in a future shadow cabinet.